Forigners in France..

[Jonzjob]

13 years back we moved here to be a part of our new envoirement and to

be as French as we could be, being foreigners. I personaly have found it

difficult to learn another language, but I persevered and more often

than not only opened my mouth to change feet! Much to my friends

amusement. We tried to intergrate into the comunity as much as we could

and were welcomed into our village and the life in it. We joined in with

the vilage life and have really enjoyed it. It has been a wonderful

experience!

We are now moving back to the U.K.. It has nothing to do with Brexit,

just the right time and time for a return to our native country. Yesterday

evening we were invited to an aperitif with our walking group in one of

the village halls. We were told not to bring anything with us as the eve

was in our honour. Normally everyone brings something either to eat or

drink. When we arrived we were greeted by everyone and realised that the

village Maire and madam deputy were also there. We were greeted as old

friends, complete with 'bisous'. There was a

short speech from the walking group president, followed by the Maire and

a presentation of a lovely, large medalion of the village. Then

followed by several wonderful presents from the walking group and a show

of sadness that we are to leave. I was very close to tears as was

SWMBO, my lovely wife/better 1/2.

In a 3 weeks time we will finish our adventure in our special bit of

France and return to England. But this adventure will stay with us and

be enjoyed over and over in our minds. Yesterday evening will have a very

special part in it!

Our walking group are quite excited and have asked if it would be

possible to visit our new home in England and see where we will be

living? Our answer was "pourquoi pas?"

Just before we leave we will be at the celibrations for 11th November and as a lot of you know, as I am a member of the Anciens Combattants of our village we will be attending the lovely lunch with them. Then 4 daze later we will be heading north for the last time as French residents!

Next? The start of our new chapter and if it is good as this one we will be very happy.

[EuroTrash]

What a lovely post to read to start the day, thank you for sharing. Every happiness in your return to the UK jonzjob and with your attitude I'm sure you will be happy.

[Lehaut]

Agree, lovely post to read. When we got our French Nationality, we were presented on stage with a gift at the annual village Mayor's speech and drinks. The down side was that he then said over to you for a speech!

[Judith]

John,

It was good to meet you the once, as you say, in our lovely little bit of France.  I wish you very well for your return, as they say, to each there is a season, but hope that it doesn't mean you will leave this forum, your posts are are a treat, especially when you give us such a good start to the day.

Bon voyage, bon retour, and bonne chance!

[Théière]

Don't be a stranger John and do read your PM [:D]

[Yonner]

Good luck Jon, and post a wood turning exploit from time to time eh?

[Jonzjob]

Thank you for all your kind words folks. We were very lucky to end up in this village and to be accepted so readily. Hopefully we can manage the same in our new place, but we are renting and not too sure how long we will be there? A year at least. It's going to be good fun driving a French registered car for a few weeks until our new C4 is ready [6] Just think, no parking tickets [blink][blink]

I did read my PM Teeps, but does forgetting to reply can't as an excuse?  [:-))]

I will be setting up my lathe as soon as I can, so with all the lovely comments I get I will be posting more of what I do.

[Jonzjob]

Well, that was so good it posted twice [8-)]

So pretty please will one of the milk monitors delete this as apparently my time for deleting expired within about 5 seconds of posting [:-))]

[idun]

That is wonderful.

It never was easy for me to speak french either, but when the very best of friends are made and good acquaintances it is worth the effort.

[andyh4]

Good luck John, super post.

After 4 years total immersion in France - preceded by 2 years working in France - I still feel that my German is better. It shouldn't be but it is.

And worse, we can both struggle for English word s from time to time having either the French and or the German word readily to hand!

[Jonzjob]

As I said before Andy, the language has been one of my major difficulties, but without it you loose so very much of the life here. So, what the hell, I have room in my mouth for at least one of my feet most of the time?

The one thing that I have failed at is written French? I spent days just writing a few words down time after time after time. Pages of just a few words, but still forgot the spelling. As most know, I suffer the same way in English [8-)]. I have always thought that I could well be slightly dislyxic (oe however you smell ti? [+o(] )

One bit of advise I would give to anyone who, like me, has difficulties speaking French. Don't worry, try what you can, make an attempt and almost all of the French will love you for it. If they are the ones who  don't then they aren't worth worrying about anyway.

We used to think that so many of the locals were being alkward when they didn't understand what we were trying to say, but I came to the conclusion that so many don't understand how to work their way around a word and if the pronounsiation is not perfect for the part you are in then they just don't understand it? That is obviously a generalisation and generalisations are always wrong [8-)] ( think about it [6] )

We will take so many lovely memories back with us and will be visiting friends from time to time. We hope that some will come and visit us too so that we can show them whatever special part of England we are in.

[idun]

How well put Jonzjob about the language.

My written french is not good, and yet it is apparently almost as good as a couple of people I know, french people. And I even had to look at your post again to see how you spelled your 'name' because I have difficulty with written english too.

And as with you, there are lovely people who will like or love you, in spite of just about massacring their language.

These days, I do feel for the poor souls who cannot understand 'me' though, because since I have been back, I have been faced with english people saying things to me in 'french' and I have not understood, at all.

[mint]

[quote user="idun"]How well put Jonzjob about the language.

My written french is not good, and yet it is apparently almost as good as a couple of people I know, french people. And I even had to look at your post again to see how you spelled your 'name' because I have difficulty with written english too.

And as with you, there are lovely people who will like or love you, in spite of just about massacring their language.

These days, I do feel for the poor souls who cannot understand 'me' though, because since I have been back, I have been faced with english people saying things to me in 'french' and I have not understood, at all.

[/quote]

Nothing new there, Id, I have met lots of English people who speak French to me that I struggle to understand.

En revanche, I speak French to French people who don't understand me!  Though, that is now getting less and less frequent.  It's nearly always the better educated people who do understand.  Could be because they speak to more étrangers and thus are more used to all sorts of strange pronunciations.

I am at present looking for someone to give me lessons helping with pronunciation.  Have looked for a few months now and not yet found someone who wishes to comply with such a strange request (or they perceive it to be an impossible task!)

[woolybanana]

Nimt, it is your strong Celtic accent getting in the way!!

[Jonzjob]

Oh dear Wooly, she's talking about French not Garlic! Do trie to keep up [:-))]

Have you tried this lot Mint? 

http://avf.asso.fr/Website/site/eng_welcome_welcome1.php

I think that you have probably heard about them, but if not they are all over France and if they are half as good in your area as they are here in Carcassonne then our lot are twice as good as yours. Errr, sorry, got a bit carried away there [8-)][:$]

What I nearly said was that they do language lessons for speech and our lot go up to advanced level. They may be able to help and it's only about 30€ or so a year. They do all sorts of visits too and loads of other things.

[andyh4]

Totally agree about language and hence the disappointment that mine is not better. The trouble is that quite a number of our friends want to improve their English when they speak to us and persuading them that it is more important that we get a semi fluent command of French is impossible.

[mint]

Jonz, thanks for the link but it's patently untrue that they are in all parts of France as there is no place listed for Aquintaine or even Nouvel Aquitaine!

There are no end of places offering French courses near me but I don't want any of those.  Just a pronunciation class.  But my friend, who is also interested, and I have a cunning plan.  We will go to the local U3A place and collar a French person after we have had a chance to judge their pronunciation and see if we could come to a private arrangement with them!

Otherwise I am with a French friend all day tomorrow, going to some art exhibition about an hour from here and I will see if she is willing to help out.  I am, however, a bit wary of using a friend for fear of something going awry and I don't want to fall out with friends!

Edit:  sorry, should have written Nouvelle Aquitaine.  Mixing up my masculins and feminins again but there again, I should have been aware that Aquitaine is obviously (rolls eyes) masculin.....

[Patf]

French pronunciation - when starting to learn french at school (aged 11+) we spent the first half term, 3  lessons a week, practising pronunciation. Repetitive drill.

I still remember the pain in my nose from practising the nasal sounds.

Only after that did we have proper french words.

Jonzjob - good luck with your move, I hope it all goes smoothly for  you.

[mint]

Strangely enough, Pat, before I came to live in France, I actually found a tape in a library in a so-so .

downmarket small town in South Wales, that had all the pronunciations for the common groupings of vowels.

For example, eu, euil, ille, eau, etc.

It even had an accompanying booklet so that you could follow the sounds on the tape whilst looking at the book.  As you say, dead boring but I found it very useful as a start and gave me huge confidence in wrapping my tongue round the unfamiliar sounds.

I wonder if the tape is still there and I wouldn't mind betting that I was the last person to have borrowed it or even the ONLY person to have ever taken it out of the library.

Perhaps I should have confessed to having lost it and offered to pay for it!

[Théière]

Couldn't you just put a clothes peg on your nose [:D]

[BritinBretagne]

[quote user="Théière"]Couldn't you just put a clothes peg on your nose [:D]

[/quote]

If you want your pronunciation to improve you probably need to listen more. Immerse yourself in the French language through music, TV, radio and films and listen to how words are pronounced then work at repeating the sound.

[idun]

I still do that when watching TV5 monde, have always done it.

Hardly helps, but I do my best! Some of us just do not have the 'gift' of languages.

[Jonzjob]

[quote user="BritinBretagne"][quote user="Théière"]Couldn't you just put a clothes peg on your nose [:D]

[/quote]

If you want your pronunciation to improve you probably need to listen more. Immerse yourself in the French language through music, TV, radio and films and listen to how words are pronounced then work at repeating the sound.[/quote]

That's a good idea, but down here a lot still have a VERY strong Oc accent. After all it's the Languadoc, the lang of oc, Occitane and that is a very strong accent that isn't heard a lot of the broadcasts of many stations. We had a hell of a problem with it and when our Maire is talking even the villagers have problems with his accent. At our 'do' last Thursday he took great pains to cut his accent and speed down when he was talking to us. He doesn't normally do that.

Here 'demain' becomes something like 'demaigne' and it took us ages to work that simple one out! The 'e' at the end of a word is pronounced very strongly. As for masculine and feminine [8-)][:-))]

I'll stick with Wiltshire for now [blink] Thatz were uz iz gona bee fur a wiile init [kiss]

[idun]

Frankly, I have always been convinced that I would have picked up a strong oc accent if I had lived there? I love the sound of it, where as 'french, french' I do not find in anyway attractive and I cannot do it.:)